Last iteration I blamed four failed runs on the probe sampling every
~41 s, slower than the title screen lasts, and withdrew three earlier
conclusions on that basis. Building the fix tested the claim and killed
it.
The speedup is real and control-verified. One long-lived ffmpeg x11grab
stream, raw RGB, glyph counted in numpy -- no per-sample process startup,
no PNG encode, no convert -crop:
wrapper `screenshot` 3.98 s per sample (emulator running)
import -window root -> PPM 1.20 s
long-lived x11grab stream 0.29 s 13.7x
The counter is byte-identical to is_title.py: 753 on the committed title
capture, 327 on the main menu.
Pointed at a running game it says the opposite of what I expected:
332 frames in 85.3 s = 3.89 fps; max glyph 0
1674 frames in 420.0 s = 3.99 fps; max glyph 0
1674 consecutive samples over seven unbroken minutes, four per second,
zero green-(A) pixels. Sampling rate was a real defect that happened not
to be the cause.
So "neither locale reaches the interactive title without a pad press" --
withdrawn last iteration for want of evidence -- is reinstated, now as a
dense measurement, with its reach stated: a MID-RUN window only, silent
about the boot title.
Leading hypothesis, unconfirmed: the PRESS (A) plate appears only in the
boot title window and the attract loop's title carries none, which is
exactly what title_states_capture.sh was written to test. The experiment
is to start the fast probe from t=0 rather than attach to a run already
in progress.
METHOD: fixing the instrument is how you test the explanation that blamed
it -- a plausible mechanism is a hypothesis, and the fix is its
experiment, not its proof.
e492cee8b9